Life Coaching

Over the winter break of 2020 when pandemic restrictions were in full swing, vaccinations were just barely on the horizon and I had had nothing to spend disposable income on for months apart from Costco gyoza and scrubs, I bought myself the Lego Harry Potter castle for a xmas present and put it together over the next few weeks.  I am not a skilled map follower, and although I am good at construction, I am not that great at following the detailed bag by bag lego instructions.  So I developed a pattern.  Cut open the bag, sort the pieces by like, follow each step very carefully and then double check.  This did not in fact take a great deal of brain power, so I listened to podcasts at the same time and learned about life coaching listening to Brooke Castillos famous podcast.  One thing led to another and I started hearing more about coaches.

Yesterday I was on my second day of holiday, arguably my first as the actual first day was still occupied by a good deal of wisdom teeth oral surgery recovery, and I was sitting in my local mall people watching and drinking a coffee.  My goal was to interact with my home in the way that I might when on holiday somewhere new.  Sleep in, get a coffee, buy a book, sit somewhere sunny and pretend to think, window shop, have lunch etc.  The kind of day which slips by and promotes the kind of slowing down and enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures.  Your pleasures may include skydiving but mine truly are simpler.

So I stopped by the new bookstore in the food court, thinking I might buy Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart – which I have been hearing good things about and instead was drawn to Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity.

Circumstances

People familiar with the Life Coach School will be familiar with The Model – basic cognitive behavioural therapy packaged in a way to make it clear that it is not facts that cause our feelings but the way we think about them.  Circumstances are the facts of a situation – stuff everyone in the world would agree on and are not coloured by opinion.  I have embraced this way of thinking in most areas of my life but the one which has been the stickiest has been the domain of homemaking.

“The entryway is a mess” is a thought not a circumstance.  “The laundry needs to be done” is a thought not a circumstance.  “The kitchen floor needs to be washed” – well you get the picture.

And of course, although I can require my teenagers to clean things, hire people to do work, request that my spouse cook supper etc. it all boils down to me thinking about, planning, requesting, deciding etc.  And the whole process to change the way I thought about this felt a lot like taking a 1950’s style tranquilizer and embracing housework as a way to bless my family.

Besides, for much of my adult life, I have cooked dinner, cleaned house, organized the change of seasons clothing and so on without all this complaining – what is so different now?

The Way of Integrity

Martha Beck jumps right in to her main premise – that the way to live a joyful and meaningful life is to be in harmony with ourselves and out true inner desires.  There is a quiz in the first section which invites you to truthfully disclose in what areas of your life you are settling for good enough in and invites you to examine them more closely.

As I pondered this idea, I started to wonder if perhaps the area of housework is one where doing it myself used to be in harmony with myself and my inner desires but now no longer is.  Was there something in my belief system about younger children, more limited resources, importance of modelling doing this work myself that made cooking supper myself important at one point but now no longer?  On the other hand, replacing cooked dinner with takeout is in opposition to to my ideals about a reduced carbon footprint, not overeating, supporting local agriculture and so on.

So what would my ideal meal situation look like?  Hire someone locally to shop and prep food?  Prep once a week for lunches and maybe 3-4 suppers?  Adopt a European lifestyle where I stop by the market every day after work and make what seems fun?

The excitement of viewing tough situations through a new lens is that I can see that:

1. I have some emotion processing to do as these are areas where I feel a bit stuck.

2. I have some work to do to discover my underlying values in these areas.

3. I need to get creative and solutions focussed to bring my practice of cooking and cleaning into alignment with those values.

TL;DR

Areas of your life where you feel only OK about are areas where you are not in integrity with your values.  You need to process your emotions, discover your values, and implement something new.